ilo led the way to the stairwell that could, potentially, fit the width of a bulldozer. It was so goddamn wide, Lee wondered what the purpose of such a stairwell was. Lee stood at the landing just before the gym basement, realizing that an entire ten Lee Asanos could stand shoulder-to-shoulder and still have room for more on the stairwell.

Milo and Rushil were already at the end of the stairwell by the time Lee's focus returned. He hurried down, shoveling Noods in his mouth so that he could just be done with the bowl sooner rather than later. He didn't want to walk through the entire gym eating.

The basement appeared to be some sort of free weight room. There was a wall of mirrors like this was a ballet class and Lee came severely underprepared. When Milo walked through, Lee wasn't all that surprised to see that everyone seemed to know who Milo was.

There had to be about six guys in the basement that day and every last one of them waved to Milo. They passed a burly looking fella with familiar-looking biceps.

Lee's palms grew clammy. He chucked his Noods in the nearest trash bin as if it was evidence. Rushil snickered at him from where he stood near Milo as the guy clasped onto Roland Ball's hand and reeled him in for a bro hug.

"Hey man, what's goin' on?" Roland said, and, as they pulled away, he gave Milo a fond pat on the cheek and sort of caressed his ear. It was weirdly intimate for two bros at a gym.

Is this another dimension? Am I dreaming? Lee thought, because not only that, but Roland, the USFC Hunter quarterback, was shirtless.

"Christ, your jersey doesn't do you justice," Lee said, out loud.

He slapped his hand over his mouth when both Roland and Milo turned to look at him. Rushil let out a startled laugh and whispered, "What the fuck..."

Roland took a confident step away from Milo and gestured to his defined six-pack. Lee stared at it, his mouth watering. "It's good, huh?" he said before perching his hands on his hips. He thought better of it, though, and turned with a Greek sculpture pose to show off his biceps like he was about to throw discus. "You like?"

"I thought showing off was my job," Milo whined.

Roland turned his back on them, flexing his biceps. The muscles in his back visibly rippled and God, Lee didn't know that was possible. He shivered and clasped his fist against his mouth as he nodded and said, "Yes, good. Very good." His voice cracked over three different syllables.

"I hope you realize that all guys go to the gym just to glean compliments off of unsuspecting women," Rushil said.

"Damn straight," Roland said, pinning Rushil with a wink as he turned back around. Rushil blinked, unfazed. He turned, deadpanned, onto Lee, who was all but trembling under the mighty glory of Roland Ball.

Roland clapped Milo on the back, and Lee realized that he had been entirely too distracted by all of the exposed muscles that he hadn't realized Milo's eyes were on him. Milo startled, looking up at his teammate as Roland said, "You got Coach's email?"

"Yeah, meeting at seven. Got it," Milo said with a firm nod.

"Perfect. Well, I'll leave you all to it. Nice to see you again, Rushil. Hopefully I'll see you tomorrow, huh?"

"Yes, I'll definitely be there," Rushil said. As Roland walked off, Lee raised an eyebrow at his lab partner. Rushil blinked at him and said, "What?"

Lee laughed and shook his head. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

As they walked down the length of mirrors, Lee found himself staring after Roland Ball. Lee saw photos of him all over his social media—from media coverage of the latest game to the feeds of his friends posting pictures of him being a general goofball. Roland had a plethora of photos—an entire portfolio, really—of pictures of him kissing the cheeks of every football player on the team.

They left the free weight room to an empty, industrial corridor where their footsteps echoed and Lee's voice amplified despite his intentions of being quiet. "There's a home game tomorrow, isn't there?"

Rushil turned around with his arms out, beaming wide. "Yup! Which means frat row is the place to be!"

Lee rolled his eyes. Truthfully, he never once set foot in a frat house. USFC was a massive campus in the middle of a massive city—in order to get in to a frat party, Lee would have to get his name on the party list. The only way to do that, unfortunately, would be to socialize with fraternity brothers. Girls tended to get priority on the lists, anyway, so Lee's shot at getting on any lists depended on if he made friends with people who had access to them.

"Never pegged you as a party person," he confessed, walking up beside Rushil.

"I'm not, but Roland invited me," he explained. "I'm sure it was a joke but then I got invited to the Facebook event so..."

"I invite you to all of the post-game parties," Milo argued, stopping in front of the locker room. He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at Rushil, who giggled and rubbed the back of his head. Milo pointed to Rushil and looked at Lee to say, "Usually he's at Manley."

"Yeah, we watch the games together and study during commercials," Lee said.

Milo blinked at him, hand lowering. "You... watch football?"

"My family's always had season tickets to the USFC Hunters," he said. "Perks of being alumni, or whatever."

"You never finished telling me about them," Rushil said. He turned to Milo to say, "Lee got into USFC Law. This was news to me. Breaking news, like, two minutes before we got here."

"Looks and brains," Milo said with a grin. "So you're gonna be a lawyer or something?"

Looks AND brains.

The words echoed in Lee's head on repeat into eternity.

"Y-Yeah. I mean, fuck no. No way," Lee said in a panic, shaking his head. "My family's a bunch of cutthroat criminal justice lawyers. I passed the entrance exam just to get them to pay for my first semester and then I switched colleges."

Rushil put an arm around his shoulder and tipped their heads together. "And now we're both premed. Fascinating, right? Picture us as doctors."

"Sounds hot," Milo said. "Unfortunate that I'll have to wait eight fucking years to get a checkup."

Rushil snorted and shoved Milo into the locker room. Milo swatted him away with a goodnatured smile on his face as he swept into the room with a valiant gesture. As Milo introduced them to the men's locker room, Lee's mind imploded into a blackhole.

Somehow, Lee survived the tour. After grabbing his things from the locker, Milo took them through the three floors of the gym. The top floor supported an entire track that circled the circumference of the complex, looking over the second floor lined with machinery Lee never bothered to remember the names of. Everything come out of Milo's mouth just sounded like, "Looks AND brains. Sounds hot. Tasty."

When they rounded back to the front of the gym, Milo held up his phone where the clock ticked to six thirty in the evening. "I've got a meeting to get to, but I'll see you, Rushil, tonight. And Lee—I'll see you tomorrow bright and early."

"Yeah, sounds good," Rushil said.

Milo threw his arms out then and, as seemed to be the custom, Rushil reached out for a hug. Milo folded his arms over Rushil's narrow shoulders and rocked him back and forth for a solidly executed hug, saying, "I'll miss you dearly, my dear, sweet Rushi Roll."

"Until tonight, my love," Rushil said.

Lee put a hand to his forehead and briefly wondered if he was hallucinating, but the image of Milo turning towards him with his arms out had him reconsidering reality instead.

In a panic, Lee blurted out, "I don't hug."

Milo dropped one arm then, still extending the other. "Handshake, then."

Lee put out a hand. He didn't prepare his body for the absolute force Milo put behind the hand he slapped into Lee's palm, like he was trying to break his wrist or something. Lee's arm turned into a noodle that wobbled when Milo gave it a firm shake.

And then, Milo was off.

"Rushi Roll," Lee whispered.

"Yeah?"

"He calls you Rushi Roll. Why the hell haven't I thought of that yet?" Lee cried, throwing his arms up. "And what was with that 1940s-esque romantic drama shit I just witnessed with my own two, bleeding eyes?"

They started on their route to Manley Hall and, considering the fact that Rushil didn't take the turn for Lockhart, Lee figured studying was in their itinerary that night. Rushil shrugged, thumbs hooked under the straps of his backpack.

"I don't know. What I do know is that you totally wanted to hug him, but you didn't follow through, which I just don't understand."

Lee slapped a hand on his forehead and moaned, "I panicked."

"Eh, it's probably for the better, anyway. Lest you pop a boner in public," Rushil sighed. He scuffed a foot on the brick walkway as Lee turned to look at him. "I mean, Milo's kind of a serial monogamist."

"A what?" Lee snorted.

"Serial monogamist. I don't know what else to call it," Rushil said. When Lee continued to stare, Rushil rolled his eyes and said, "I think Milo's addicted to Tinder. Since the start of the semester, he's had three semi-serious relationships and a whole host of dates—I gathered the second part after putting two and two together with you... you know... serving coffee to all of his dates."

"Classes have only been in session for three months."

"I know! So I'm just saying that... if you're looking for something steady..." Rushil started, awkwardly, grimacing as if in pain. Lee's eyebrows rose even higher as Rushil floundered with his hands and said, "Then I don't think Milo's your guy."

Lee laughed and said, "Right, well, Park can do whatever the hell he wants. The guy probably gets enough ass to make me concerned about testing positive, if you know what I mean."

Milo Park was a football player. Weren't they notorious for flying through girls, anyway? When he wrote Milo's name on receipts and stuck them to Milo's coffee cups, he supposed he thought about it. Fantasized about it, even. Lee wasn't even looking for something steady. Despite what his schedule suggested, he wasn't exactly set in stone or "dating material".

But he spent so long wondering about what in the Hell made Park so undeniably charming.

Would he be able to let go if it ever came to that point?

Lee shook his head.

"On the topic of fraternity cesspools," he said, drawing Rushil's attention back, "are you really going to a frat party?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Have you ever even been to one?"

"No. Why, do you wanna go? I bet I could get your name on the list."

"I—" Yes, he wanted to say. The last serious party he attended was at the whim of his eldest brother. He had visited for a weekend and, somehow, wound up at a house party with his brother's graduating friends. He came for a calm weekend spent in the USFC library while Sen would study and Lee would prep for exams at high school. Instead, he spent the weekend getting hammered and regretting it.

Sen's house parties made him hesitant to ever attend another party again—or drink gin, for that matter. Gin fucked him up in the worst ways possible, and just thinking about the taste made him nauseous.

He stuck his tongue out before saying, "Maybe?"

"Well, I'll have Milo put your name on the list and then if you don't show, you don't show. It's no big deal," Rushil said. They walked a ways in silence before Rushil said, "But I'm serious, about you and Milo. I just don't want—"

"Yeah, I know. We've kind of had this coming anyway. We've just been romanticizing it in OChem," Lee said, more for himself than for Rushil's sake.

Just last week Rushil and Alex were naming Lee and Starbucks' Guy's children while Lee argued that having children was the most basic form of inhumane torture. It was a torture device as old as time and yet it kept happening.

It didn't stop Rushil and Alex from gushing over the name Macchiato for a girl, to which Alex had said, "Nickname: Macchi," which spurred Lee to say, "Sounds too Machiavellian."

Rushil smiled softly as Lee swiped his card at the Manley building entrance. As Lee held open the door for him, Rushil said, "Well, for what it's worth: You'll have a lot of fun working out with him."

Lee let out a dry laugh. He dragged his feet after Rushil as he said, "Uh, yeah, I'm sure you're speaking for my hormones. The rest of me is already combusting into flames just thinking about it."